


your hands in mine

by florbelles



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 11:41:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/722879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florbelles/pseuds/florbelles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You know the thoughts of your brethren like you know the stars in the sky, a never-ending hum in the back of your mind, buzzing at the edges of your awareness. </p>
<p>You have never known anything like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your hands in mine

**Author's Note:**

> About time I found myself over here! Figured I might as well put this up - it's cross-posted on my tumblr, anyway.

You know the thoughts of your brethren like you know the stars in the sky, a never-ending hum in the back of your mind, buzzing at the edges of your awareness. You know the touch of each different grace against your own, the sound of wings beating against the air, the piercing scream when one of you dies, leaving light burned black and charred outlines on the pavement.

You have never known anything like this.

You have never felt the pulse of two souls under your hands, broken and battered nearly beyond repair, and felt a desperate need to fix, to heal, to steal them away and never let anyone else see. You have known devotion and love of the purest kind, but never a love like this, a painful heavy thing, violent and angry and destructive, a love that sinks beneath your skin and boils your blood. The love you once knew felt like order; this is chaos and rebirth and ruination, and it is, you marvel, stronger than the sum of the forces you were joined to. 

There are two souls under your palms and etched into your heart, and you carve your name into their ribs as retaliation, as a claim, you who have given yourself over for the taking, attempting to take in return. If there is any measure of justice left in the universe (and you doubt it, another crack in the veneer, another worry to add to the mounting heap), you might be allowed to hold on for a little while. 

It scares you, sometimes, being a half, a third of a whole. You keep giving away percentages of yourself freely, pieces of you falling from your open palms, and they are like twin siren calls around the hairpin turn and you can’t resist, could never resist when it came to them. They curl around you, slot into place beside you and reshape you like it’s the easiest thing they’ve ever done, like they were born to do it - and maybe they were, another step in their destinies, another contingency heaven never planned for. 

There are blisters on your hands and the taste of pomegranates in your mouth, and you are being torn in two - pulled from heaven down to earth, pulled towards and between two boys with quicksilver blood and harsh edges to every smile, and you have to choose between everything you’ve ever known and all you’ve ever wanted to find out. You don’t dream (that comes later, much later, when everything is shattered and moments of clarity chance to weave themselves through the haze of pain and pills and nights spent shivering in the backseat of a black car), but you see things, images flitting in and out of your mind, shoved away as soon as they appear. Visions of blood in a ring around your forehead, a crown of thorns or a crown of gold, and the choice seems like it’s yours but it feels, more and more, like it’s not. 

A hero and a martyr or a villain and a fallen one, and these are the things you must consider. 

You forget, sometimes, that legends are never men. They are tragedies and comedies and heroes and villains and fools and cautionary tales, and they never grow up or grow old or learn from their myriad mistakes; they simply are, until, of course, they are not. 

Some days it feels like all these stories fit you - you will continue to be and you will continue to be and you will continue to be until you are gone, every piece of you handed over or torn to shreds or dissolved away to nothing. There are two souls cupped in your palms, and every day is a fight to keep them there, not let them trickle through your hands, pouring more of yourself in to fit the spaces in between, hold the two of them together when they’re falling apart, and you will rip apart at the seams before you let them go.

You break, eventually, as you must. There’s no soft landing, nothing to catch you; the way of angels, after all, is to fall and plummet and shed light with every step downward, but you’ve never been amongst them even when you called yourself a soldier, and your way is paved with blood and fury and betrayal and death tolls counted by flashes of lost grace that rattle you down to your bones. The voices in your head (so many, so many, all crowding and vying for control) compete with the screams of your brothers and sisters, stars collapsing in on themselves. The way you taste changes, thin edge of iron spread over your tongue. The smell of roses is always there, in your nose, the back of your throat, mixing with the coppery tang of blood and pomegranate seeds, and you stop falling only after there’s nowhere else to go. 

You wander, alone and desolate, crawling through mud and decay and darkness, enemies on your heels and at your throat. There are two souls beyond your grasp and echoes of them in the pulse at your wrists, but you can’t do anything except run away from them, try to escape the two voices in your head begging for you to come back, because you are not worthy of being found and you are not worthy of being healed. All you can do now is fight, keep your enemies at bay long enough to keep them safe, unite them and bring one back home to the other, and you dedicate yourself to this, running and fighting and destroying with what little power is left to you, praying you won’t be found, because you may not belong here but this is where you must stay. 

You watch betrayal etch itself in the lines of a face you love better than your own, and you tell yourself it’s for the best.

Even when you are pulled back into the light, kicking and screaming, it’s a resolution you resolve to keep. It’s for the best if you stay away, it’s for the best if you leave and never come back, and the voices in your head are wrong in begging you for more. But some things are constant (and the universe seems to enjoy rearranging itself to best you, scattering your plans to the wind), so you find them, tired and saddened by loss and so, so beautiful for all of it. They are united and whole and safe again, and you think you’d be content with this, to have put them back together without asking anything in return. As long as they’re safe, it doesn’t matter what happens to you; and you turn to leave again, but they won’t allow it.

There are two souls surrounding you, and they pour themselves back into you with more effort than you thought possible, holding you tightly to them and not letting you go no matter how much you struggle, how much you protest that you aren’t worthy of this. It is as extraordinary as anything you’ve ever seen, all the miracles you had a hand in creating - that two beings so surrounded by darkness have such capacity for love, such a desire for your presence.

You’ve been so long at saving, and here you are, letting yourself be saved. 

It isn’t easy. (When has it ever been with you?) There are enemies to stop and trials to complete, the long slide from grace marked by the number of orange pill containers left on the side of of the highway. There’s learning to feel pain, to feel powerless and cold and sick, and there is learning that there will always be someone to pick you up again without fail. 

Your family has changed from legion to two and there’s no hum in the back of your mind these days, but there are two boys with gentle hands and worn-down smiles, and you have never felt less alone. 

There are two souls to either side of you and two sets of lips tracing the scars on your back, and you’re leagues away from where you were and miles from where you’ll end up, but heaven sounds less like regret and more like two names on your tongue and your name on theirs, and for the first time in a long time you find yourself at peace.


End file.
